As we wallow in the weird, we might send freaky (if not altogether paniced) birthday greetings to John W. “Jack” Ryan; he was born on this date in 1926. A Yale-trained engineer, Ryan left Raytheon (where he worked on the Navy’s Sparrow III and Hawk guided missiles) to join Mattel. He oversaw the conversion of the Mattel-licensed “Bild Lili” doll into Barbie (contributing, among other things, the joints that allowed “her” to bend at the waist and the knee) and created the Hot Wheels line. But he is perhaps best remembered as the inventor of the pull-string, talking voice box that gave Chatty Cathy her voice.

Ryan with his wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was his first only spouse; he, her sixth.

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As we peel our ears, we might spare a thought for John W. “Jack” Ryan; he died on this date in 1991. A Yale-trained engineer, Ryan left Raytheon (where he worked on the Navy’s Sparrow III and Hawk guided missiles) to join Mattel. He oversaw the conversion of the Mattel-licensed “Bild Lili” doll into Barbie (contributing, among other things, the joints that allowed “her” to bend at the waist and the knee) and created the Hot Wheels line. But he is perhaps best remembered as the inventor of the pull-string, talking voice box that gave Chatty Cathy her voice.

Ryan with his wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was his first only spouse; he, her sixth.

The makers of Barbie seem to apologize A LOT for underestimating young women. This time the Internet’s buzzing over a pretty cringe-worthy Barbie book, “I Can Be A Computer Engineer,” published out of Random House.

Barbie is featured in the book as a stylishly pink-clad computer engineer that somehow breaks everything and doesn’t know how to code. She does draw puppies though. This lady hacker needs the help of two dudes named Steve and Brian to do the real programming work cuz she’s just, “creating design ideas.” Ha ha ha…what?

In another section, a supposedly intelligent engineer Barbie (who should be familiar enough with technology not to do this) puts her flash drive into Skipper’s laptop and accidentally infects it with a virus. Skipper didn’t back up her homework and loses all her files and music, too. Silly Barbie. The two then get into a pillow fight. A pillow fight! Of course. Because women actually do that.

A blogger who writes for Disney, Pamela Ribon first wrote about “I Can Be A Computer Engineer,” after picking it up at a friend’s house and reading horrific page after page. The traffic from her blog was so intense that she republished the piece on Gizmodo last night. The social blew up and people took to the Twitters to let Mattel know what a lady hacker can accomplish…

Mattel has since apologized for this completely sexist garbage on it’s Facebook page, promising it won’t do it again:

The portrayal of Barbie in this specific story doesn’t reflect the Brand’s vision for what Barbie stands for. We believe girls should be empowered to understand that anything is possible and believe they live in a world without limits. We apologize that this book didn’t reflect that belief. All Barbie titles moving forward will be written to inspire girl’s imaginations and portray an empowered Barbie character.

This is not the first time in Barbie’s more than half a century history something like this has happened. I clearly remember when Barbie held an aversion to math. Mattel released a Teen Talk Barbie back in 1992. The chattery doll would say things like, “Math class is tough,” and “I love shopping” right after, implying young girls would be better off skipping homework not suited for them…

As we reaffirm our repugnance at Mattel, we might recall that it was on this date in 1654 that mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher.Blaise Pascal had a carriage accident that changed his life: his horses bolted and plunged off a bridge, throwing into the roadway. He had just experienced the trials of his father, who’d broken his hip (at a time when such an injury was desperately serious and often fatal): while Pascal was himself only bruised, he saw the episode as a warning directly from God. That night he experienced a Christian conversion– light flooded his room; he recognized Jesus,– and changed the course of his work, favoring Christian philosophy over the scientific work that had occupied him until then. For the rest of his life Pascal carried around a piece of parchment sewn into his coat–a parchment inscribed with ecstatic phrases: “Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars…” and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: “I will not forget thy word. Amen.”

After winning a seat in the pantheon of so-called “super foods,” pomegranates got a burst of popularity, with consumers craving everything from fresh seeds to juices and teas. But its newfound fame also found it the victim of an age-old problem: food fraud. According to the non-profit organization U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) in Maryland, pomegranate juice was the most common case of food fraud in the past year, often watered down with grape or pear juice to cut costs.

The group operates the Food Fraud Database, which went live in April 2012 and recently added 800 new records. Other usual suspects from the scholarly articles, news accounts and other publicly available records include milk, honey, spices, tea and seafood.

Though senior director of food standards Markus Lipp says we enjoy a high level of food safety in the United States, he also warns, “The real risk of adulteration is that nobody knows what’s in the product.”

Consider, for example, olive oil…

Olive oil might have the distinction of being the oldest adulterated good. “Olive-oil fraud has been around for millenia,” according to the New Yorker. Cut with sunflower and hazelnut oils, olive oil was considered “the most adulterated agricultural in the European Union” by the late 1990s. Even after a special task force was formed, the problem remains. In his 2012 book, “Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil,” Tom Mueller writes about the ongoing fraud. Mueller tells the New Yorker, “In America, olive-oil adulteration, sometimes with cut-rate soybean and seed oils, is widespread, but olive oil is not tested for by the F.D.A.—F.D.A. officials tell me their resources are far too limited, and the list of responsibilities far too long, to police the olive-oil trade.”

As we decide to just grow it ourselves, we might recall that it was on this date in 2004 that Mattel announced that Barbie (“Barbara Millicent Roberts”) and Ken (“Ken Sean Carson”), who had been dating since Ken’s appearance in 1961, had broken up. In 1993, “Earring Magic Ken” had been released; it became an instant cult collectible (the best-selling Ken in Mattel’s history)– and apparently, planted a doubt in Barbie’s mind as to the authenticity of her boyfriend’s attraction to her.

In explaining the split, Russell Arons, vice president of marketing at Mattel, said that Barbie and Ken “feel it’s time to spend some quality time – apart…Like other celebrity couples, their Hollywood romance has come to an end”… though Arons indicated that the duo would “remain friends.” He also hinted at what Earring Magic Ken collectors had suspected for some time: that the separation might be partially due to Ken’s reluctance to get married.

In February 2006, after Ken had a “makeover,” the couple committed to rekindling their relationship. They are ostensibly still a couple, though Ken’s re-do may have taken a bit too well: in 2009, Mattel introduced “Sugar Daddy Ken.”